From Direct Mail to ABM: What 25 Years in B2B Taught Chris Hare

When most people talk about Account-Based Marketing, they picture SaaS tools, dashboards, and cold outreach warmed up by AI. 

But what happens when you take ABM into industries like chemicals, manufacturing, and medical? And what if your strongest marketing move isn’t another shiny campaign, but asking harder questions about where your value really fits?

We jumped on a call with Chris Hare, COO of The ABM Agency (ABMA), who’s been in B2B long enough to remember when we just called it "good marketing." 

Over the last two decades, he’s helped complex organizations move from scattershot selling to sharply focused, one-to-one and one-to-few ABM rooted in strategy, not surface-level personalization.

What he shared wasn’t just practical, it was a reminder that ABM is less about following trends, and more about finding truth. 

“ABM Is Just Good Marketing with a New Label”

We kicked things off with a bit of marketing nostalgia, remember when we called it direct mail? Then it was analytics. Then it became Account-Based Marketing. But at its core, it's always been about targeted, relevant, customer-focused communication. 

What’s changed? The channels, the technology, and the internal alignment needed to make it work at scale.

Today, Chris and his team apply ABM strategies across traditionally underrepresented industries, where the sales cycles are long, the buying committees are huge, and personalization means more than slapping a first name into an email.

Challenge One: Sales and Marketing Alignment

Chris was very clear: if you don’t have sales onboard, you don’t have ABM. 

“We call it account-based marketing, but really it’s account-based sales through marketing,” he explained. 

And he’s seen a welcome shift, unlike five years ago, more sales teams are now already bought in.

Still, old habits die hard. 

One of the biggest red flags is when marketers ask, “How much of the sales team's time will this take?” For Chris, that’s a sign you’re treating sales input like a cost, not a value-driver.

“If you’ve sold ABM properly, it should be a hand-in-glove relationship,” he said. “Sales should be asking for our time because they see the upside.”

Challenge Two: Setting the Right Objectives

One of Chris’s standout points is before setting ABM goals, define what ABM isn’t. It’s not just a more expensive lead gen campaign. It’s not a cosmetic layer added to demand gen.

Instead, ABM should stand alone, with its own budget, accounts, and expectations. 

“It’s a fundamentally different investment of time and effort,” he said.

For companies new to ABM, Chris recommends starting with clear segmentation: is this a net new logo play, or is it focused on expansion? Each path requires different KPIs and success benchmarks, and unless you understand the difference, you’re likely to misfire.

Challenge Three: Selecting Target Accounts (Without the Hype)

Some use spreadsheets. Some use fancy tools. Chris cares more about fit.

His three-part process for account selection includes:

1. Sales intelligence: What are reps hearing in the market?

2. Intent and research: Who’s showing signs of need?

3. Value proposition matching: Which accounts actually align with what you do best?

“You can’t sell everything to everyone,” Chris said. “There are accounts where your product just makes more sense. That’s where you win.”

Bonus tip: when clients give him three target accounts, he doesn't always split effort equally. “Put 60% of your budget into the one that’s most likely to convert. The rest? Split the rest.”

Challenge Four: Deep Research, Not Just Data Dumps

Chris’s agency uses a strategic ideation framework called Spark; a method that flips traditional research on its head by asking provocative questions like “What won’t work?” to find the answers that matter.

Don’t aim to write the 600-page dossier on an account. Instead, find the gaps; the tensions, the under-addressed needs, the overlooked opportunities. “That’s where the gold is,” he said.

It’s not just about what an account says it wants. It’s about what it actually needs, and whether you’re the best answer.

Challenge Five: Personalization That Doesn’t Get Creepy

Chris is refreshingly real about personalization.

Forget the tier-one stalker move where you bring up someone’s pig farm from a decade-old tweet (sorry, Sam). “Sometimes that hyper-personal stuff works, but a lot of the time it doesn’t,” he warned.

Instead, focus on account-level insight (tier two) and industry-level context (tier three). And whatever you do, make the subject line count. 

“If your best insight isn’t in that first message, you’ve already lost,” Chris said.

Challenge Six: Channels That Work (And Ones That Are Fading)

Chris’s go-to ABM channels right now are:

• Email: but smarter, more insightful, and more value-led than ever.

• LinkedIn: but only with a thoughtful, touchpoint-based approach.

• Programmatic & digital ads: with messaging that actually resonates.

But he’s also pushing into out-of-home ads, and even ads inside office buildings. Because email response rates are tanking, and ABMers need to get ahead of it.

He bets that in 18 months, the top channels won’t look like today’s favorites. And he left us with this as a challenge: “What do you think the top 3 channels will be in 18 months’ time for ABM?”

Final Thought: Is the MQL Dead?

A question asked by one Chris (Chris Rack) and answered by another.  And Chris Hare said, Yes.

He’s all in on marketing qualified accounts (MQAs). While MQLs still play a role in demand gen, they’re borderline meaningless in high-value ABM programs. 

“It’s just part of an account score,” he said. “So yes, MQL is dead. Long live the MQA.”

We’ll leave you with this...

ABM is not a glossy add-on to your demand gen strategy. It’s a different muscle entirely, and Chris Hare wants you to treat it that way. From choosing accounts based on value-match, to making research count, to thinking critically about channel fatigue, his message is clear:

Don’t just follow the rules; question them. And if you want to keep questioning what’s next in Account-Based Marketing, stay tuned. Our next guest will try to answer Chris’s final challenge: what channels will define the future of ABM?